100 Melting Ice Children

Video | 2009-08-28

One hundred ice children are melting in the heat of the Beijing sun. They are made of the ice of the Himalayan glaciers, which are the source of Asia's major rivers, from the Yangtze to the Ganges. The glaciers in the Greater Himalayan are melting faster than anywhere else in the world. Their disappearance threatens the water supply of more than a billion people.

Greenpeace China and India collected meltwater from the Himalayan glaciers, which we then gave to ice sculptors. One hundred days later, the statues were simultaneously unveiled in Beijing and Delhi.

Beijing's 100 ice children were shown in Ditan Park, the Temple of the Earth where the emperor once prayed for fair weather and good harvests. Individually handcrafted, each ice child is unique, with different gestures. But they began to melt almost immediately – a stark reminder of the fragility of our future, and our children's future, without immediate action on climate change.

One hundred ice children are melting in the heat of the Beijing sun. They are made of the ice of the Qinghai-Tibetan glaciers, and their melting symbolizes what may happen to our future.